


Bring Them Home

by hipbonesofChrist



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love Confessions, Love Letters, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Barricade, Post-Revolution, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-09-02 03:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16779067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hipbonesofChrist/pseuds/hipbonesofChrist
Summary: Despite all the odds, Enjolras survived the barricade. But with a broken heart, will he be able to survive on his own?Across town, Marius also nurses the sorrow of a lost love deep within him. Neither of them will be able to bear the guilt of what happened on the barricade by themselves. They need each other.The only question is, is their love strong enough to chase the ghosts away?





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all like the first part of my new work! I haven't posted anything on here in so long, so I figured it was about time to stop dragging my feet and actually let the general public read this. I've had a lot of muse for Les Mis fics lately--probably because of all the angst opportunities--and this is one of my favorites! I hope y'all like it as much as I do.
> 
> Huge shoutout to everyone that keeps my Marius muse flowing! I cannot thank you enough!

Again, the shaking.

Marcelin Enjolras sat on a cobblestone streetcorner, his pockets feeling conspicuously empty. He had no belongings. No place to go. And his entire body from his head to his freezing feet was shuddering.

Enjolras closed his eyes, hugging himself tightly. His hands were clasped over the bullet holes on his chest, which had only just faded to scars, and still hurt when the weather was bad. His pale, haunted face was so different from the tanned, handsome one his late friends had come to know.

The clouds above were grey and angry, turning the streets into something resembling an oil painting. Alone on the ground, Enjolras’s shapely lips parted and he whispered to himself, the only words which meant anything to him anymore.

“Drink with me...to days gone by...to the life that used to—to be.”

By the next lines of the song, tears wet the man’s previously brave and bold face. He was biting back sobs with every word. “At the shrine of f-friendship, never say...die…”

As if the universe itself was mourning with him, thunder rolled across the sky, drowning out the man’s whispered words. Enjolras jumped, as if he’d heard gunshots. He shook himself, as if trying to awake from a stupor.

Stumbling, hunched over against the rain and the guilt of his sins, he stood and made for any shelter he could find.


	2. Chapter 2

Marius poked at his food with a hesitant fork, his freckles standing out against a tense face. He was using his left hand—his right was still healing, aching every time he moved too quickly.

“Marius. Aren’t you hungry?” Monsieur Gillenormand asked from the other end of the table. The young man set the silver down with a clatter against porcelain.

“No.”

The youthfulness that once permeated every word the young man spoke was gone now, replaced with a terrible heaviness that only great loss could bring. His face, already depressed, grew sadder still, until for just a moment he looked older than his old grandfather.

Pushing his chair back, Marius left the table as quick as he could. Even in motion, he seemed to have aged far beyond his years.

Locked in his room, the young Pontmercy held two letters in his hand. The first, he opened quickly, with fingers that had done so many times before. The fading, slanted script was Cosette’s—his lost love’s. He could have recited the words of it by heart.

In it, she told him of her whereabouts. He remembered all too vividly how his heart had sunk to his shoes, standing there where she had instructed and finding nothing but nothing.

She had signed _with all my love, your Cosette._ His heart, at first so resentful of her, still cried out for those blue eyes and that golden head of hair.

The second letter, he’d only opened one other time before, and he fumbled to open it even now. He couldn’t bear to let his eyes skim the lines, drink in each word like he could with Cosette’s letter. For these pieces of parchment had love written all over them as well, only in a different, somehow more poignant, way.

The letter was signed in an ink-spotted scrawl.

_Marcelin Enjolras._

“Marcelin…” Marius’s voice broke as he whispered that name, the name that Enjolras never used. He felt a tear slip down his nose, and cast the letters aside, so as not to ruin them with his weeping.

There had been so many things he’d wanted to say to Enjolras. So many things that had been swept away, forgotten in the tide of revolution. Now he’d never get a chance to say them.


	3. Chapter 3

“No money?” A shopkeeper asked in a voice like rust. “Then _get out_ !”

Enjolras stumbled back, all the courage he used to have now gone from him. His eyes, once alight with the spark of rebellion, were glassy like marbles as he dipped his head and made his way back to the street.

At least he wasn’t shaking yet.

A carriage rumbled by, too close to him— _need to watch where I’m going_ , he thought, although it was more out if habit than anything. His sense of self-preservation, even simply his sense of _self,_ had died that day on the barricade.

In his mind, his tombstone should be right there next to the ones reading Grantaire and Gavroche and—

Enjolras shook his head, trying and failing to clear his mind.

_You don’t know that he’s dead. He could be alive._

Pushing past people on the street, Enjolras covered his mouth to hide his ragged breathing, logic not quelling his anxiety. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop picturing that grey gravestone, engraved with that name.

_Marius Pontmercy._

_No._

_No._

“No!”

Enjolras let the word slip loudly through clenched teeth, and the people around him went silent, as if they could sense his despair and guilt. They looked at this dirty, bandaged, pitiful excuse for a young man, and their eyes condemned him.

_Don’t think of him don’t think of him please not now--_

Enjolras’ chest heaved with sharp breaths. He stumbled brokenly towards the brick side of a building, but his knees gave out before he could reach it. The quick drop, the sharp pain, was the last thing the broken man needed to push him over the edge, into mindless, sickening panic.

“Please!” He cried, frantic and beside himself. “Marius Pontmercy! Where is Marius Pontmercy!” Tears gathered in his bloodshot eyes, threatening to spill at any moment.

“Does anyone know Marius! Please, tell me!”

He held his hands out to people walking past him, pretending they didn’t see the mad fallen god. No one answered his prayers. Marius wouldn’t have turned his nose up. Marius would have been right there helping him, Marius had always wanted to be there, and Enjolras had never let him.

There was a crowd growing around the man now, maids and street urchins looking for a bit of entertainment. Enjolras’ eyes settled on a small blond boy, staring at him with tired blue eyes, and he reached for him, eyes wild.

“Gavroche, Gavroche I’m sorry!” He rambled. “I’m so sorry but you have to help me find Marius, please I need him, I think I’m going mad--”

The boy turned and ran from the crying man, taking with him Enjolras’ last hope. _Gavroche is dead._ The man had to remind himself. The thought raised goosebumps on his skin. He’d been so sure that boy was his friend--just like he was sure every painter he passed was Grantaire, every Irishman was Courfeyrac, every poet was Jehan.

“ _Please_.” Defeated, he sobbed loudly, running his hands anxiously through long, tangled hair, pulling strands out. That was when he heard it.

“Monsieur Gillenormand’s.”

Enjolras looked up, squinting through his tears. _I’ve gone properly insane. Marius, help me, please_ . His eyes roamed the crowd, but everyone they fell upon looked just as confused as him. Had they not heard it?

“Wh-who said that?”

From the crowd, that faceless voice sounded once again. “Go to Monsieur Gillenormand’s.”

“Are you real?” Enjolras asked, although he did not really want the answer. “Show yourself!”

The crowd parted, and Enjolras stared up at a thin, dirty, waif of a girl, her long brown hair tangled and tumbling down her shoulders. She looked somehow familiar—maybe it was because she had the same haunted look on her face as he did. The look of someone who survived a war...and perhaps, wished they hadn’t. Enjolras let out a sigh of relief that was more like a breathless sob. She was real.

“P-please. Where is his estate?” Enjolras whispered, grabbing for her hand. Letting him pull her down, wincing at some healing combat wound, the girl whispered directions into his ear as the crowd dissipated, now disinterested. The madman had stopped crying and begging--they would forget him, now...but not this woman. Her brown eyes knew him—so why could he not place her face?

“He is alive, Enjolras. I swear to you.” She said in a voice rough with heartbreak.

He studied her harder as she spoke his name. Something in her eyes spoke of love and love lost. He would have been compelled to ask who had hurt her, if he wasn’t suddenly so sure he already knew the answer.

“Who...who a-are you...” Enjolras shook with anxiety, he knew not why. But the girl didn’t answer. She just gave a sad smile.

“He is alive, monsieur.” she answered simply.

“Th-thank you. Thank you.” was all he said then. He still wasn’t sure he could trust anyone he saw, but he would cling to whatever hope he could get. He clasped her small hand in his, squeezing tightly and willing her to think of better days. As she left, she pulled a cap over her head, tucking her hair up into it.

_The boy at the barricade. Who took a bullet for Marius._

The realization came quick and startling. But by the time Enjolras called for her to wait, his once-powerful voice trembling with fear and confusion…

...she had already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are appreciated, as always!


	4. Chapter 4

Marius’s quill scratched across the parchment. His brows furrowed in concentration.

_Marcelin—_

_I’ve received your letter, and I only want to let you know that I am well, and missing your good company,—_

Shaking his head and setting another piece of paper over the first, he started once more.

_My dear Enjolras…_

The idea had come into his head late one sleepless night. Perhaps, if he pretended to reply to his friend as if all was well, he could fool himself into thinking it was.

So far, it hadn’t worked. Marius’s romantic heart had been shattered by grief, leaving only cold logic. Pretending was a child’s game.

Marius sighed, frustrated, and one more piece of paper slid onto the pile. The tip of the quill dipped into the inkwell and then touched the parchment, and the man closed his eyes and wondered what he could possibly want to—no, need to—say to Enjolras in response to his correspondence.

 _You can say anything you’d like to him._ Marius suddenly realized, with a stab of sadness so poignant that he could physically feel it. He’d been going about this all the wrong way.

_You can tell him everything, now._

_Because he’s dead._

Even as he thought that, his traumatized mind spun with wild theories. _Are you really sure? Did you see him die?_ Marius sat silent at his desk, arguing with himself. Finally, crazily, he slammed his hand down, splattering the fresh parchment with ink.

“Yes! I’m sure he’s dead! No one else survived! I’ll never see him again, why can’t I accept that! _I’ll never see him again_ !”

As if a dam had broken in his mind, the man pressed quill to parchment, dripping even more ink over the paper as he scribbled furiously, angry at the world for taking Enjolras away, angry at Enjolras for ever saying he would die for the cause, angry at himself for still, _still_ hoping he was alive.

_Marcelin—_

_Every time I think of you I_ _want to_ _sob . It still doesn’t seem real to me, that I’ll never hear you talk of revolution again. That your bright, perfect eyes will never rest on mine and give me courage._

_Since we met I felt there was something about you that compelled me to love you. And I’ll never know now if you share my odd thoughts, of falling asleep beside you or watching the stars on a cloudless night._

_If you could read this you might laugh at my femininity, and your thoughts would remain hidden from me. And I know I’ve missed my chance to tell you everything I feel._

_But maybe, just maybe you can read this somehow, and you can finally know that I_ _know you’ve always loved me. I could feel it in every letter you’ve ever written, I could see it in your eyes at the barricade I_

Marius swallowed hard, squinting against the tears and the sobs that had suddenly erupted from deep within him. But his hand kept moving across the paper, even as his tears blurred the ink.

_I love you too, Marcelin, mon ange, mon chéri. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you. I’ll never forget the look in your eyes when I told you I was engaged. It was like betrayal. I know I’m too late now. And I’m so so sorry. I hope you know that I love you so m_

“Monsieur Marius?”

There was a prim knock at the door, startling Marius. His eyes wide and sad, he looked at all he had written, chest still hitching with silent sobs. He felt empty now, as if he’d poured his soul out and there it sat on the desk, black ink tears on parchment.

“What is it?” His voice cracked horribly.

“There’s a man here to see you.”

For just a moment, Marius thought, _What if it’s Enjolras, and he reads what I’ve written?_

But that wasn’t right, was it? He’d never read it.

_He’s dead._

“What does he want?”

“He says he needs to see you.”

“Does he have a name?” Marius snapped, more out of habit than anything. He was just going to send whoever it was away anyways.

“Marcelin Enjolras.”

Marius went completely still, too in shock even to cry. Then, as his mind slowly processed those two words, he jumped from his seat, quill dropping from his hand and staining the floor.

“What name did you say?” He demanded. Maybe he’d finally gone crazy, mad with longing and heartbreak. Maybe the butler hadn’t said that name. Maybe there hadn’t even been a knock at the door, and Marius was standing alone, demanding things from someone who wasn’t there. The fear of being mad was so great that the man wanted to jump in bed and pull the covers over his head as if he were a child. He almost squeezed his eyes shut in terror, but he forced himself to look underneath the door. There were the shadows of the serving man’s feet, shuffling nervously. Marius took deep breaths.

_You haven’t gone mad yet._

“Monsieur?” The servant had answered, but Marius had been too lost in his thoughts to hear it.

“I’m sorry--what name?” He repeated.

“Enjolras.”

So Marius wasn’t imagining it. _But it wasn’t Enjolras. It_ couldn’t _be Enjolras._

Going to the door and pulling it open, Marius faced the nervous-looking man with vacant eyes. He didn’t speak for a long moment, watching the man fidget and wait for a direction.

“Sir?” The butler finally asked, stepping back. He’d looked into Marius’s blue eyes, and had seen something shift in them. Something the servant didn’t entirely like.

_Enjolras was dead. Which meant it was an impostor. Probably Thénardier, or someone like him, looking for food or money. And using my dead friend’s name to get it._

The expression the nervous man had seen was the fire of war. It blazed in Marius’s eyes. It had never been there before, even in the midst of rebellion, but it was certainly here now.

Out of the corner of his eye, Marius could see the desk drawer where he kept his pistol. Once, Marius hadn’t been a killer. Once, he would have just screamed himself hoarse at anyone who dared masquerade as his friend. But the rebellion had changed that. He had never been so certain of what he was going to do.

_I’m going to look this stranger in the face and kill him for taking Marcelin’s name._

Marius’s voice held a cold, malicious tone that was distinctly reminiscent of Enjolras’. If he’d had any friends left, it would have chilled them to hear their romantic speaking in such a way.

“Send him up.”


	5. Chapter 5

By the time the butler came and opened the door, Enjolras was leaning against it, his eyelids heavy as lead. Tremors shook his entire body, and he couldn’t remember ever struggling this hard to just hold himself upright. He nearly fell onto the startled servant when the door swung inwards, nearly started crying when he forced himself to stand, swaying.

“Monsieur, do you need a doctor?” the butler asked. Enjolras hardly heard him, limping past the man with one singular goal in mind.

“I n-need to see Marius.”

He climbed the staircase with his knees knocking together, both hands on the railing, so he could pull himself up each step. He’d started shaking again, worse than ever before. Every time he closed his eyes--which was more and more frequently--he could see snatches of the bloody revolution playing out behind his eyelids. When he opened them, spots danced in his vision.

He’d felt Death looming over him before, but this wasn’t a bullet wound or cannon shrapnel. This was hunger hollowing his stomach, dehydration turning his face pale, exhaustion bruising the skin underneath his eyes.

_You can’t let him see you this way._ Enjolras thought feverishly. That soft, naive Marius--you’d scare him half to death, looking like this.

As he neared the familiar bedroom door, the dying man forced his hunched back to straighten, nevermind the tremors that shook his shoulders--he could no longer stop them. His hand gripped the doorknob, faltered. What if Marius wasn’t in there? What if the girl, the butler, this house itself, were all some cruel joke his mind had played on him?

Drawing on some reserve of strength he didn’t know he had, Enjolras turned the knob and stood in the doorway, eyes widening as he realized what he was seeing.

Marius was there. He was really _there._ He was _alive—_ unless Enjolras was still hallucinating, truly dying.

But why, thought Enjolras—if the man was real—why on Earth would he be holding a pistol? And why was it pointed at his chest? Why was fury burning in Marius’s face?

Enjolras knew he was looking at his friend, but suddenly all he could see was the Musain, and the soldiers pointing their guns at him as Grantaire grabbed his hand, whispered an apology and pushed him out the window as the weapons discharged. Enjolras had stared up in a daze as the cynic died his martyr death, dangling sickeningly out the window, the red flag of revolution clutched in his hand.

The broken Apollo stared through Marius with blank, wide eyes, not really seeing him. Then, suddenly—

“ _Marcelin?”_

_—_ Marius spoke his name. That familiar voice often heard in Enjolras’s dreams actually sounded in his ears, and it was as if that one word pulled the god out of the past, released him from those bloody sights and sounds.

But coming out of the past took more energy than Enjolras had. He was so weak, he was...he was speaking, but he hardly knew what he was saying...then, gradually...

he

was

falling...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, one of my favorite things about writing this chapter was describing how Enjolras survived. I think it would be just like Grantaire, to impulsively push the man he loves out of the way of harm, not realizing that he was essentially “stealing” Enjolras’s martyr death away from him.


	6. Chapter 6

As soon as Marius set eyes on that curly hair, those tired, war-torn eyes, the remnants of that red coat, he let the pistol slip from his hand. It clattered on the ground, but seemed to fall silently to him, such was the strength of his shock. The anger he'd felt just seconds before flowed out of him like a great river.

Marius felt dizzy with fear, that sickening kind of terror where you’re suddenly questioning everything you know, asking yourself, _Have I finally gone mad?_ Unless he was crazy, it was him. It was--

“ _Marcelin_?”

This thin, shaking ghost of Enjolras seemed almost a statue silhouetted in the doorway. But when he heard his name he seemed to spring to life, like Marius had turned a key.

“Marius...I looked for you...I…” His voice was painfully quiet, and as the man stepped forwards, feet dragging on the floor, he stumbled. Quicker than he’d moved since his injury, Marius took Enjolras around the waist, holding him up. His arm ached, but he didn’t care. Enjolras was here. He wasn’t a hallucination, he was here in his arms and—and...

“You’re burning up, Enjolras.” Marius brushed Enjolras’s hair back, feeling his forehead. The man was limp in Marius’s arms, his eyes glassy. He spoke like he was in a daze, no emotion in his voice.

“I was...out in the rain.”

Half-dragging him across the room, Marius sat Enjolras on the bed, kneeling before him and looking into his face. Beneath the dirt and the sadness, it was indeed the same man that had stood on that barricade, waving the flag high.

“What’s happened to you, Marcelin?” He breathed. There was no answer--only a blank stare met his questions now.

Turning and rummaging in his wardrobe, he brought out the shirt and pants he’d been running his hands over for ages. They still smelled like Enjolras, before Enjolras had smelled like blood and dirt.

“I...you left these here one day and I had to...I had to keep them.” He held them out to Enjolras, but the man made no move to take them. Marius set them on the bed beside him and stood there, taking in the sight of the man he loved and wondering how to bridge this gap that had suddenly come between them. They’d professed their love to each other in a million different daydreams—why is it they barely looked at each other now?

“Enjolras, I...I thought you were—”

Marius broke off, stepping back, as Enjolras rose from the bed, the piles of parchment at the desk catching his eye. The one on top was still wet, with ink and tears. He could see his name at the top of it, scrawled in the handwriting of Marius’s non-dominant hand.

“I…” The man wasn’t sure whether he wanted Enjolras to read it. He wasn’t sure Enjolras would want to read it. But by the time he started to speak, Marcelin’s eyes were already moving across the page.


End file.
